


Meridian Zero

by Siyah_Kedi



Series: Golden City [2]
Category: Original Work
Genre: F/M, Originally written in 2011, old
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-01
Updated: 2018-05-01
Packaged: 2019-04-30 19:06:29
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 14,173
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14503551
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Siyah_Kedi/pseuds/Siyah_Kedi
Summary: Sequel to Boy Next Door





	1. Present Day

CHAPTER ONE - PRESENT DAY

The bell over the door jingled in tandem with the creaking hinges.  It slammed a moment later, followed by an apologetic-sounding _oops._   I looked up from the cards and smiled to greet the customer.

 _Cute,_ I thought.  _Young.  Probably not much older than me.  Looks desperate._   None of this showed on my face; Freya was constantly telling me she’d teach me to play poker, but I had no interest in playing cards.  The cute-young-desperate young man who’d just walked into Freya’s Fix-Its & Meridian’s Tarot suddenly realised I was there.  His face turned scarlet. 

“How can I help you today?”

He looked around, intimidated by the décor.  I took a step forward, redirecting his attention to me.  “I heard – ” his voice broke, and he cleared his throat.  It echoed noisily off the wind chimes.  “I heard,” he tried again, “that this was the place to come if you had a problem.”

I opened my mouth to speak.

A great shuddering crash echoed through the building, knocking several jars of herbs and incense off the shelves.  Dust clouds billowed into the room, followed closely by a roiling black smoke.  As the customer and I recoiled from it, a door down the hallway opened, pouring more smoke out into the main shop, and my partner Freya stumbled out of the mess coughing.

“Phew!” she said.  “That was –” _cough, hack_ “- the best attempt yet!”

Her words were always cheerful, but I found myself skeptical.  “By whose standards? You’ve made a mess of the shop and terrified our poor mister – ” I looked at him, waiting for him to fill in his name.

“Zero,” he said, suddenly catching on.  “Law Zero.”

Freya looked impressed – the Zero family was fairly big around here.  I calmly completed my sentence, refusing to be swayed by the prestige that had just walked in the door. 

“You’ve terrified our poor Mr. Zero.”

“The mark of a great inventor,” Freya said to him, shaking her soot-blacked fist in his face – “is that of explosions.”

He looked faintly green.  “Is that so?”

“Yes.  Explosions,” she repeated, and looked around for something else to make her point.  I was half afraid that she’d leave it at that and we’d lose his business.  She proved me wrong a moment later.  “And _incense!”_  

Startling Mr. Zero and I, Freya lunged for the incense lying in heaps on the floor, gathering it up and cackling.  She vanished back behind the door to her workshop, leaving the rest of us standing bewildered in a heaping, sooty mess.

“Welcome to Freya and Meridian’s, Mr. Law,” I said, smiling.  “Please excuse our dust.”

 

Once the initial shock of a first-time visit to our store wore off, Law was fairly relaxed.  I served him tea, and we talked about the weather – I was fully aware that my shop could make grown women run for the door, and grown men break down and cry, and had discovered that the best way to deal with this was by sitting down with them and talking about inconsequential things.  Eventually they would turn the conversation around to whatever it was they needed, and we could get down to business.

Law was no different.

“So, I came here for a specific reason,” he said.  “You’re probably wondering what it is.”

I smiled smoothly, and took a sip of tea.  “Probably,” I agreed.  “It crossed my mind once or twice to wonder, ‘now what’s a nice young boy like Law Zero doing in my shop?”

He flinched at the sound of his name, and suddenly he wasn’t just some bored young debutante looking for his palm to be read.  There were real feelings in that flinch.  I leaned forward. 

“A not so nice young boy like me,” he said, and the haunted expression in his eyes drew me in.  I prayed desperately that this would be more interesting and more deeply rooted than just some broken heart from this years Teen Queen celebutante.  “I don’t know what I did.  I don’t know why, but I’m in serious trouble.  I need to know what it is, and how I can get out of it.”

A mystery.  I felt a shivery tingle slide up and down my spine.  It felt like the cold fingers of death reaching for me.

I shook off the melodrama, and reshuffled my tarot deck.

“This is where we’ll start,” I said.  The grateful smile that slowly spread across his face was worth the sensations he’d brought in with him.

 

*

I couldn’t figure it out.  No matter how many times I reshuffled, or asked him to shuffle, and once we even called Freya in to shuffle them up - which meant my cards now had dark fingerprints all over them – the same five cards continued to come up.

Death.  The Fool.  The World.  Wheel of Fortune, and The Hermit.  All cards denoting change and spirituality.  I looked at Zero again, trying to figure out what was hounding him that would bring these five cards up again and again.  More often than not, the cards were a gimmick, a trick of the mind – I’d gotten very good at reading people, and could generally tell them what they wanted to hear when they came for a tarot reading, relying on my knowledge of the cards to skew them slightly to make my customers happy.

It was a system that worked for me, and I’d very rarely had any complaints.  But there were also those rare instances where I had no control over the cards, and like a puppet on strings, I moved the way they wanted me to.

“Miss Meridian?  What does this mean?”

From the tone of his voice, I realised this wasn’t the first time he’d asked this question.  I was losing time in contemplation of the cards, something that hadn’t happened in a while.  It worried me, and the icy finger trailed down my back again.

I shuddered.  “It means that there’s a big change coming to your life,” I said.  I explained the meanings to him as clearly as I could.  _Big change.  Small understatement._

He drew back, his eyes skittering off me like a cat over ice.  “Do you know – no, never mind.  Thank you for your time, Miss Meridian.”

He rose to his feet, and I followed him to the door.

“Please feel free to come back any time,” I told him.  “I’ll be working on it from here.  Is there somewhere I can contact you?  A phone number, an email address?”

He paused at the threshold and withdrew a card from his pocket.  “My personal cell phone number is on there,” he said. 

“Thank you.  I’ll be in touch as soon as I figure anything out.”

“Thank _you_ , Meridian.”

With those deceptively soft words, he was gone, the only sign that he’d ever been there the lingering jingle of the bells and the tangible silence his absence left in my sitting room.  The workshop door opened down the hallway and Freya poked her head into the sitting room.

“He was cute,” she offered.  Her words dropped like stones into the stillness of the room.

“He won’t be back,” I answered her, my voice softer than I’d meant to make it.


	2. Two Days Later

CHAPTER TWO – TWO DAYS LATER

I couldn’t seem to get Law Zero out of my head.  It wasn’t helped by the fact that Freya seemed to have turned match-maker, and dropped his name into every conversation we had no matter how banal.  A typical conversation with her since he left our shop went something like:

“Do you think this tea is good?”

“I liked our peach blend better.”

“I wonder what Law would think of it.”

Or if not that, then:

“That boy we just passed on the street looked a lot like Law, don’t you think?”

It was a constant thing.

“Hey look, that’s Law’s picture on the news.”

I turned around to slap her on the backside of her head, and saw her staring, speechless at the television in the window of the pawn shop.  A news program was on, just as she’d said.

Law’s unsmiling face stared out at us from it.

“Law Zero, youngest son of the state’s most influential senator David Zero, is on the run from police after a shoot out at the Zero family house in Norfolk Saturday.  Police arrived on the scene after a concerned neighbor heard shots fired from within the Zero compound, and found Law with the gun in his hand.  After a technical oversight allowed him out of police custody, the young heir to the Zero family fortunes simply vanished like a puff of smoke.  Any information leading to the whereabouts or arrest of Law Zero can be called in for a reward – ”

I stopped listening.  The cards made sense, as did his haunted expression.  A fugitive from the law!  Briefly, I wondered who had been shot, and why, but it didn’t stand up in the face of my overwhelming fury.

He’d stood in my kitchen!  He’d drunk my tea, and sat there all innocently cute, lying to my face the whole time.  I pulled out my cell phone, before I realised that I couldn’t tell them anything interesting.  He’d been in my house two days ago. What could I do to help them?

The cold finger trailed down my back from my shoulders, and I hunched to get away from it, suddenly cold despite the warm April day.  Something in the back of my mind told me that I didn’t have the whole story.  I couldn’t reconcile the image of cold-blooded fugitive with the boy who’d come into our shop and been so surprised by Freya and her ‘workshop antics’.  Something didn’t fit.

“Hey, didn’t you get his number?”

Freya’s chirpy voice cut into my reverie.  My gaze tore itself away from the television, which had moved past to show pictures of the aftermath of a car crash.  Freya was looking up at me seriously, her big blue eyes looking strange with the news reflecting off them.

It was one of the biggest differences between the two of us, one people always commented on.  Some people commented out of fear or disgust.  Her eyes reflected everything, like still pools of water.  They were big and blue, and she only had to look at you with that childish expression on her face to convince you that up was down, black was white, and that she was innocent of whatever you were accusing her of.   I knew this from experience. 

Mine however were so brown they were almost black, and the only thing they reflected was light.  Many of my customers had told me my eyes were part of the mysterious appeal of my tarot reading.  Looking into them was like looking into space; they just kept going down.  When I looked at my eyes in the mirror, all I saw were my eyes, but they were good for business. 

“He gave it to me so I could call him and tell him if I figured anything else out about his weird readings.”

“So call it and find out what the hell he’s playing at.”

I would never have considered myself particularly fat or tall, but Freya barely reached five feet, and she was so skinny that she looked like a twelve year-old. And she so infrequently swore that it heightened the impression.  Hearing the profanity out of her childlike mouth was disconcerting, and told me just how upset she was by this turn of events.  She’d told me straight up before that she wasn’t nearly as good at reading people as I was – her profession was machines, I’d replied.  Mine was people. – But I could tell that she’d honestly liked Law Zero, and was deeply concerned by the news program.

I was nettled to realise that I liked him too.  He was cute.  I pulled out my cell phone and dialed the number on the card.

After five rings, the voice mail service picked up. 

“You’ve reached Law Zero.” His voice was a caress, low and sensual and nothing at all like the tight, controlled thing he’d spoken with to me at the shop.  “I’m not available right now, but if you leave your name and number and a brief message, I might decide to call you back if you’re lucky.”  Amusement.  Joy.  If not for the name, I might have thought I’d reached a wrong number.  The boy who’d recorded that message was nothing like the one who’d come to me for help with his problems.  The message beeped, and I took a deep breath.

“Law, this is Meridian Lariat.  You came to my shop the other day for help solving your problems.  Did you know you were on the news?”

As soon as the words were out of my mouth, I realised that the cold touch on my back had turned into a fiery heat burning through me.  It happened so seldomly that it took me a few moments of silence on the phone to realise what it even was.

I was _angry._

“Why didn’t you tell me you were accused of murder?  They found you in your house holding the gun?  Who did you shoot?  Why did you even bother coming to me?  If you’ve gotten me into trouble, I swear to whatever God you hold dear, Law Zero.  You’ll regret it.”

I snapped the phone closed and took a few seconds to take a couple deep breaths.  Freya was looking at me with sparkles in her eyes.

“That was impressive!  I’ve never seen you so stern.  What would you do to him?  Call down some demon from hell to curse him and his blood for the rest of eternity?”

I sighed.  “If I could call demons from hell to do my bidding, do you think I’d be telling fortunes outside your workshop?”

This stymied her for a moment.  “Maybe you did and just forgot about it.  They told you, ‘Work next to Freya.  One day her noisy, messy, explosive workshop will be the greatest place for you to do your greatest work.”

I laughed, my anger evaporating now that Freya and I were back on familiar ground with each other.  I seriously thought for a moment that nothing was going to be the same between us, when I saw the look in her depthless eyes as she watched that news cast.

“Are you sure they didn’t come to you and say ‘go into business with Meridian? One day she’ll look into her crystal ball and the secret of time travel will be revealed to you both.’”

She laughed at me.  Time travel was her biggest project.  She came out of nowhere one day, telling wild stories about another world.  It sounded like something out of a Diana Jones novel, but I grew up with my parents telling me my head was in the clouds most of the time anyway.  We made a good pair, even if others found us odd. 

We continued on our way, and were halfway to our destination – an auto parts store for Freya’s ‘project’ – always on the back of her mind was her time machine.  She swore she’d worked out the mathematical equations, and just needed the proper parts to put it together – when my phone rang.  I didn’t recognise the number, but something in the back of _my_ mind told me to pick it up.

“Hello?”

_“Meridian Lariat?”_

My heart stopped dead in my chest for the duration of three full beats.  “Law Zero?”

A hefty sigh came through my speakers.  Beside me, Freya looked ready to burst with excitement.  “He called you back!” she hissed, waving her arms.  I scowled at her and plugged my free ear with my free hand so I could hear him.

_“I guess you found out.  I hoped you wouldn’t.”_

All of a sudden, that weird anger was back.  “What’s that supposed to mean?  You could have gotten me into serious trouble.  I don’t need that kind of trouble, Law.  We’re barely keeping ourselves alive; we don’t need _jail time_ on top of everything else!”

_“Shh!  Meridian, I’m sorry.  Everything I told you was true.  I don’t know who shot my parents.  I don’t know where I got the gun.  You’ve got to believe me.  I don’t know who did it, and I don’t know how to find out.  The cops are after me.”_

Was I hearing this guy right?  “Well, _duh._   They found you in the house with _the gun in your hands._   Then you disappeared.  What else are they supposed to think?”

Another sigh.  _“Look, can I meet you again somewhere?  Not your shop.  I don’t want to get you in trouble, you know.  I didn’t think about that.  I didn’t even know you were there.  I just happened to see the ad in the newspaper, the one that said you solve all problems.”_

“We’re mostly talking about broken down cars or failed love lives.”

_“You’re telling me that the two of you couldn’t help me?”_

“I’m telling you that I wouldn’t help you if you gave me three fifths of your family fortune in payment.  I’m telling you that my shop is my _life_ and that by walking through the door with that secret hanging over your head without _telling_ me, you endangered my _life._   That sort of thing doesn’t make me feel very much like helping you.”

Beside me, Freya gasped out something that sounded vaguely like ‘ _bitch!’_   I didn’t care; we were both orphans, and that shop was the only thing we had to keep food on the table.  I hadn’t been lying when I told Law that the shop was our life.  My life.  I wasn’t going to throw it all away on some strung out, daddy’s boy rich kid –

I didn’t like the direction my thoughts were going, and I ruthlessly shut them off.  “Look, Law.  Why don’t you just turn yourself in?  What’s a little jail time compared to a huge manhunt?”

Freya tugged on my sleeve.  “Merry,” she said.  Her voice was urgent.  I ignored her.

 _“Just meet me one more time.  Totally anonymous place.  No cops, and I won’t involve you again.  I just need to know what you think of those cards.  Because the weirdest thing keeps happening. I went to another fortune teller.  The same cards kept coming up.  I bought my own deck and shuffled it around the way you did.  Then I dropped the whole thing on the floor.  All of the cards were face down except those same five cards.  Something_ weird _is going on and you’re the only one I can trust enough to tell me anything, anything at_ all. _Please, Meridian?”_

I felt all the air go out of my chest in a rush of breath.  Raking my fingers through my hair, I nodded.  “Alright.  One more meeting.”

_“Thank you.  Thank you so much, Meridian.  I’ll … well, I don’t know what I’ll do, but I’ll repay you somehow for this.  Thank you.”_

He sounded so pathetically grateful.  But then, I realised I would be too, in his situation.  I didn’t know what to think.  The cops and everyone else were convinced he killed his _parents._   He’d been found holding the gun and vanished the minute they let him go.  A nationwide manhunt hadn’t turned anything up.  I wondered if he was sleeping in gutters, and then felt guilty.

“Merry,” Freya said again.  “I know what we have to do.  Screw this auto shop.” She scowled at the auto parts store we were standing in front of.  “I need to know if you want to come with me.”

“Freya,” I said.  The edges of my patience were fraying.  “ _Where._ ”

Her blue eyes were luminous in the fading sunlight.

“The Golden City.”


	3. The Next Day

CHAPTER THREE – THE NEXT DAY

I didn’t know how I’d ended up in the dingy restaurant at the end of Broad Street.  Law was sitting across the dirty table from me, his head and face mostly covered by a hoodie.  Clearly, a fugitive, but no one in the restaurant had given us a second look.  After I gave the place a better look than my initial cursory glance, I realised that a lot of people were talking in whispers, hoods pulled up over their faces.  This was apparently the place to be for shady meetings.  I wondered how many drug deals were going down tonight.

“The only thing I can think of is that you’ve been Touched,” I said, starting our conversation and breaking the silence.

Law raised an eyebrow from within the hood.  The incredulous expression on his face was obvious even in the smoky gloom.  “ _Touched._ ”

Freya would be hysterical if she could hear me now.  Well, she had her wild tales of the Golden City.  It was apparently the place she’d come from initially.  I had to believe her, because I’d seen and felt weirder things in my life than a delusional city, but then we all had our little foibles.  This was one of mine.

“Yes, Touched.  Not like you’re thinking, not by another person, but by a malicious spell, or spirit.  Something or someone has it out for you, and they’re not going to let you get away free.  That’s what I think.  And that’s what I also think about your tarot readings.  There’s no other explanation I can think of that would result in something like that.  Under normal circumstances, we could perhaps try a healing ceremony, or a cleansing, but I wouldn’t dare try it now.” I leaned back, preparing to gather myself together and go.  Like he’d been pulled on a string, Law leaned forward in unison, trying me closer to the table.

“ _Why not?”_

He sounded desperate.  I wondered what other signs there might have been.  I was by no means a professional occultist – _dabbler_ might have been more appropriate – and I knew that more harm could be done by ineptitude than by intentional will.  The part of me that had been initially driven to open a tarot fix-it shop with Freya – the part of me that longed to help people, no matter their problems – yearned to reach out to him, to ask him about his nightmares and the creepy feelings he may or may not have been having.  It warred with the part of me that continually screamed “WANTED BY THE POLICE! ACCUSED OF MURDER!”

“How old are you, Law?” I asked suddenly, ignoring his question.  He flicked me a suspicious look and shrank further back down into his booth seat.  He looked like a sulky teenager.  I _felt_ like a sulky teenager; I wanted to scream, “I never asked for you to drag me into your problems! Go away and let me live my life!” But I didn’t.

“Eighteen,” he muttered finally.  “I thought everybody knew that.”

I answered sarcastically.  Here was the petty rich boy I’d been expecting when I first heard his name. “Sorry if I don’t keep up with ‘The Secret Lives of the Rich and Famous.’”

He flinched.  “I didn’t ask to be born –”

“I didn’t ask to be seventeen, orphaned and forced to own my own business to support myself, either.  We live over the workshop and my sitting room.  That’s our _lives,_ Law.  That’s why it’s dangerous for us to be together.  If they think I’m helping you –”

“Which you’re not,”

I narrowed my eyes at him.  “If they think I’m helping you, I could lose my house, and my shop, and all my money, and not all the money your family has could help me out of jail.  I’m sorry, Law.  There’s nothing I can do.”

He sighed, a defeated sound.  “Alright.  I can’t ask you to do any more than you already have.”

I was grateful.  But not nasty enough to say it that way.  I felt sorry for him.  I was intrigued by him, as well.  I wanted to know more of what brought him to this place in his life, and if I were being totally honest with myself –

The boy was _cute._  

If we’d met under different circumstances, I could definitely see something going on there.  Maybe.  At least from my part.  And who knew?  Maybe if he weren’t a federal fugitive wanted for murder, maybe he’d think I was cute too.

I exhaled hard, drawing his attention.  “I’m sorry I can’t do more for you.”

“It’s okay,” he said, but every line and curve of his body said it wasn’t.  There were even lines forming on his face, and if he hadn’t just told me his age, I think if I’d met him for the first time right then, I would have put it into the late twenties, maybe early thirties.  Eighteen year old rich kids shouldn’t have to look like that, a voice in my head said. 

I told the voice to stuff it, and reminded myself of why I was angry with him.  He’d lied to me.

Okay.  Not lied.  But he hadn’t told me the truth.  He had willfully and ignorantly endangered Freya, our shop, our home, and myself, and that was something I couldn’t forgive.

That’s what I kept telling myself, anyway. 

 

After leaving the filthy restaurant, Law walked me home.  He made a little joke about it – “My mother raised me better than to let a girl walk home after dark,” but it fell flat and the trip was made in relative silence.

He jumped every time a car went by and the headlights illuminated us, and I jumped every time I heard a siren in the distance.  I could almost put words to the noises:

“We know. We’re coming for you.  We’re coming soon. Coming, coming, coming, coming for you.”

A clap of thunder overhead startled us both, and just as we were turning the corner onto the street Fix-Its and Tarot was on, the sky let loose with a roaring sheet of rain.  Within seconds we were both soaked.  He walked me right up to the front door, and waited while I unlocked it.

“Thank you for walking me home,” I said.  It felt like seventh grade, and my first boyfriend.  I wondered briefly if he was going to lean forward and shyly kiss my cheek. 

“No problem,” he said, and flashed me a grin.  For a moment, I could almost see the boy he’d been before his parents were killed, and then in another instance, I realised we sorta had a lot in common.  Except that I never killed my parents.  And there was never going to be anything between Law and I. Headlights flashed as a car drove past, and the easygoing expression on Law’s face melted into abject fear for a moment. 

“Well, goodnight,” I said.  I hated myself for all the things I couldn’t change. 

His reply was a ghostly whisper, almost drowned out by the rain. “…Goodnight.”

He turned and trudged away through the darkness, melting into it before he’d gone more than a few feet.  I slowly closed the door on the night.


	4. Interlude: Law Zero

INTERLUDE: LAW ZERO

 

 _Cursed,_ he thought.  She had rumours around school for being a witch, and if he didn’t know any better he might have thought she was the one who’d done it.  And she might have been able to help him.  All the things he should have said or done flickered through his head.  Should have told her sooner about his parents.  Should have told her about the visions he had every time he closed his eyes, and the dreams he had every night.  There was something calling to him, calling his name, promising secrets and happiness.

His secrets.  His happiness.

Law felt the rain trickling down the back of his hoodie, and tried not to remember the hunted expression on Meridian’s face when she realised that he wasn’t going to deny the charges.

Because he had no idea whether or not he’d done it. 

He wanted to say ‘No! No, no no, it wasn’t me, you’ve got the wrong guy, I’d never do that, I _loved_ my parents!”

But the truth of the matter was that he had no idea.  The whole night was a huge blank.  And it wasn’t the first blank in his memory, though it was – to his knowledge, which was spotty at best – the first time he’d _done_ anything during one of the blanks.  Or maybe not done anything.  He only had the cops’ words for it that he’d been the one standing there with the gun in his hand and blood all over his clothes.  He didn’t remember being taken to the police station, or questioned, or the ‘technicality’ that had let him walk out the front door of the precinct. 

The only thing he remembered was the voice in his head saying ‘run, run, run…’

And he’d run.


	5. Five Minutes Later

CHAPTER FOUR – FIVE MINUTES LATER

He’d barely disappeared into the darkness when headlights swung onto my street, illuminating the shops on either side of us. 

They stopped in front of F&M’s, and I almost called out “Sorry, we’re closed for the night.”  Then I recognised the uniform.  Then I saw the lights.  _Cops._   There were police officers on my front door at nine o’clock at night.  They could only be after one thing. 

“Meridian Lariat?”  They flashed a badge at me.  “Virginia Beach Police.  We have reason to believe you may know the whereabouts of Law Zero?”

I gathered my dignity.  I wasn’t about to let these guys get me or Freya into trouble because of that kid, and I made it a point not to lie.  “Several days ago, he came to Fix-its and Tarot for some help,” I announced.  The cop looked skeptical, but didn’t interrupt.  “I wasn’t able to help him with anything, and I didn’t see him here again.”

That was the truth.  Mostly.

“Thank you for your time, Miss Lariat.  I’d still like to ask you to come down to the station for a few minutes and fill out some forms for –”

“No!” The whip crack voice cut through the night like a hot knife through butter.  The cop redirected his flashlight to the street, and I was horrified to realise that Law had come back, and was even now slouching into sight, totally making a liar of me.  “I won’t let you take Meridian,” he said.  The cop shot me a dirty look, and I lifted my hands in an innocent “I don’t know” way.  “I’ll turn myself in, but leave her out of it.  She doesn’t know anything.”

“Law Zero, you have the right to remain silent.  Anything you say –”

“Merry!”

Could this night get any worse?  Freya’s cheerful voice rang out from the upper story window, completely oblivious to the drama playing out in the rain beneath her.

“Merry, I figured it out! Wait… Meridian, what’s going on? Is that Law – oops!”

“Freya!” At first I thought she’d fallen out the window.  She was scatter-brained enough that that’d be something she’d do, and my arms were up to catch her before I’d even thought about it.  Instead, a small glowing ball hit my palm; my fingers closed around it automatically.  A string of light shot out of it, illuminating Law’s chest.  Freya’s chest.

“Oh no!” Freya looked terrified.  “You activated it!”

“Activated _what?!_ ”

“What’s going on?”

“Freeze!”

I realised that the same light was going straight through me.  Law’s puzzled expression was the last thing I saw before the whole world went white.

 

*

It sounded like a tornado.  Or maybe being in the tunnel when a train was going through.  All I could hear was wind rushing and whipping past my ears.  It was cold.  My face was going numb, and after a few seconds of this, I got enough of myself together to open my eyes.

White clouds and blue skies greeted me.  There wasn’t anything solid underneath me.

As this realisation dawned over me, I added my screaming voice to the sound of the wind.

_Merry!_

Now I was hallucinating too.  That sounded like Freya.  I was damned if I was about to open my eyes again and find out, though. 

“Meridian Lariat!  Grab my arm!”

They opened on their own.  Freya was calmly falling right beside me, her arms outstretched.  Tears stung my eyes, drawn out by the whipsharp wind.  I reached out for her hand, and something collided with me.  We were still falling, no sign of stopping.  Wait, that was a good thing.  This situation was totally impossible.  It couldn’t be happening.

I’d never had falling dreams before.  I didn’t know what to make of this.  It seemed so real. 

“Meridian?!”

That sounded a lot like Law. 

I turned my head and he was there, clutching my shoulder.  Strands of hair were caught in his fingers, tugging painfully.  _Why would I dream Law?_   Freya was a given; she appeared in most of my dreams.  And actually, once I’d realised it was a dream, everything became much easier to handle.  Except for Law.

And the falling.

“Do you know what’s going on?” He had to shout to be heard over the wind, and I shrugged as best as I could. 

“I must be dreaming.  Freya blew something up and now I’m probably in a coma.”

He looked puzzled.  “Why am I in your dream?  Maybe you’re in my dream, because right now, I’m having a pretty realistic dream that I’m freefalling through the air.”

“Maybe a joint hallucination?”

Anything he might have been about to say was abruptly cut off by the shadow that passed overhead, startling us both into looking up. 

It wasn’t a shadow.  It looked almost like a sheet.  I had enough time to think, _wow, my dreams are getting weird.  I wonder what Freya did now,_ and then we were slowing down, not falling so fast.  Or not seeming to fall as fast.  Or something.

It still hurt when we hit the deck, and I rolled several feet before coming to rest on someone’s boots.  When I looked up, I swear there was something hallucinogenic in the glowing ball Freya had dropped, because I almost thought I was looking at a _pirate._

He growled. 

“And who be ye?”


	6. Ship

CHAPTER FIVE – SHIP

“I’m dead,” I said.  “I’m dead or I’m hallucinating, I don’t know which.”  The ship rocked beneath me, and I’d hit it hard enough to bruise.  I still staggered to my feet, keeping both my arms out for balance.  Behind me, Law groaned.

“Did anyone get the plates on that semi?”

The – he couldn’t be anything else – pirate scowled again, darkly.  “Ye’re outsiders,” he suggested.  “How’d ye get here?”

Law found his feet, and stepped between us.  “Well, I was trying to protect Meridian from the police who were after me for something I may or may not have done, when her crazy room mate dropped a bomb on us and now we’re probably lying in a hospital somewhere and dreaming this all up.”

The scowl dropped slightly.  “I’ve heard stranger stories,” he said, and then turned.  “Back to work, lads!  We’ll be droppin’ a bit of luggage off at the next port, and then it’s back to work!”

Belatedly I realised we were the center of a very large, very interested group of strange men.  They scattered like flower petals, each going back to their own specific tasks after the bellow. 

“Really, you don’t have to go through the trouble,” Law said.  “I thought I saw Freya falling with us.  We really need to find her.”  He looked at me; they both looked at me, and behind the pirate’s back, Law made a circular motion with his finger around his ear.  _He’s crazy,_ he mouthed silently. 

“Yeah,” I said.  Law was right.  Crazy or not, this was my dream.  And that meant I could control it.  Which therefore meant that I could just close my eyes and turn around, and Freya would be standing there with us.  Then we would all grow wings and fly home.

I closed my eyes tightly.  I turned around slowly.  I opened my eyes.

Freya was very definitely _not_ standing behind me.  I checked left and right, just to make sure I hadn’t missed her.  Then I realised that _I_ looked crazy, and I took a deep breath.  “Yeah,” I said again.  “Yeah, we need to find Freya.”

If this wasn’t a dream, then what was the other explanation?

What was it Holmes said?

_Once you have eliminated the impossible, then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth._

It was impossible that this was a dream.  Law and I were both here, both experiencing it.  It _could_ be a mass hallucination, but really?

_Whatever remains, however improbable…_

We must be on a flying ship somewhere.  Freya wasn’t with us, and she wasn’t going to mysteriously pop out of the woodworks.  I gathered my dignity like a shawl.  “Any help you could render us would be exceptional,” I said in my best ‘grown up voice.’ “We need to find Freya, and then maybe… get down?”

He smiled a toothless but amiable grin.  “Ye’ll get down, lass.  No fear.  And ye may even get there safely, if ye make sure yon lad doesn’t teeter straight off starboard.”

I turned around, and caught a glimpse of Law’s green-tinted face as he realised precisely where we were. 

“Meridian, we’re flying!  We’re flying on a pirate ship and we’re going to die.”  He was quiet a moment.  “This isn’t a dream, is it?  We’re really here?”

I pulled him back a little bit to ensure he didn’t fall over, and then looked over the side myself.  The ground was a disturbing distance away, little more than green and blue blurs passing beneath us.  In the distance, a flash of golden light reminded me of the stories Freya used to tell.

_“And when you’re walking around in the street you don’t really notice it so much, but when you’re above the city, and the sun catches it just right, then the whole thing lights up like King Midas had his hands into not only the cookie jar, but the whole city.”_

“It’s real.”  Law flashed me a puzzled look.  “The Golden City of Arama.  It’s real.  Freya used to tell me stories about it.”

“Aye, of course it’s real,” said the pirate.  “Ye’re flyin’ over it, aren’t ye? Just look down.”

We both looked down again.  I kept a discreet hand wrapped around the hem of Law’s sweatshirt to make sure he didn’t lean too far.  He seemed like the type to do that, especially given the warning the pirate had already passed along. 

The city looked like a puddle of gold, spilling out over the sprawling landscape beneath us like a sunset.  It was absolutely breathtaking; it was the culmination of nearly every dream I’d had for the last three years.  Ever since Freya tumbled into my life, able to talk about nothing but the wonderful golden city she’d originated in.  Now that Law and I – impossibly – found ourselves there – or rather, above it – it was just as beautiful and wonderful as she’d promised.  I wanted to go down there.  Watching it slide past beneath us left an almost physical ache in my chest.

“So where do we go from here?” Law interrupted my musing with a quiet tone. 

“We’ll find Freya.  Then we’ll find a way to go home.  And then we’ll try to find out what’s going on with you, because to be honest… something just doesn’t seem right.  I can’t picture it.”

He was grimly amused.  “Neither can I.”

“I still think you should have told me.”

“I know.”

“And I’m not happy with the fact that the police showed up on my door.  I meant what I said in that restaurant.  Fix-it and Tarot is my life.  If anything happens to it because of you, I’d never forgive you.”

“I know that too.”

The pirate/captain sidled closer to us.  “We’re not usually in the business of picking up hitchhikers.  But we also know what its like when ye’re not expectin’ to be here.  It’s happened a few times or more.”  It was all he’d say on the subject, despite the clearly interested expressions Law and I were giving him.  “We’ll give ye a ride to the nearest port, as I said.  Maybe some advice.  If ye’re Freya talked about the Golden City, it’s likely that’s where she’s from.  I’d check there, if I were ye.  Ye might be able to find someone who’s seen her, or knows where to find her.  It’s not difficult to get there from anywhere.  Passage is cheap.  And once ye find ye’re friend, getting’ home’ll be simple.  Have faith, kids.  Ye’ll be fine.  Lucky day for ye when ye fell out of the sky onto Captain Reks Carter’s ship.”  His piece spoken, the captain/pirate returned to his duties.  I’d never been on a ship in my life and had no idea what half the things they did were for.  Still, if it kept this thing in the air instead of plummeting towards the ground like it seemed it should be doing, I wasn’t going to get in their way.  One of the – sailors? – came by just a few minutes after the captain had left us. 

“I’ll show you to a room where you can stay.  Do you mind sharing? We’re a bit cramped at the moment.”

Law gave me a horrified look.  I was sure my expression mirrored his, but I was determined to be the bigger person.  “Of course, my _brother and I_ would be happy to share a room.  We’re grateful to you for your hospitality.  Are you always this kind to strangers who fall out of the sky?”

The air-sailor gave us a searching look, as if he wasn’t quite sure what to make of my comment.  “Only when they tell stories we like,” he said finally.  “I don’t know if we’re talking about the same person, but Freya is a sacred name around here.  I don’t think you’d lie about it, and you had no way of knowing either way.  But if Freya’s your friend, then you’re our friend too.  That’s why Carter’s helping you.”

Law shot me a dirty look, before smiling warmly at the air-sailor.  “My sister and I thank you most warmly,” he said, and it was like looking at a different person.  In the back of my mind, I truly found myself wondering what he was like before the trouble started. 

And he was _still_ just so damn cute.

 

The journey was short and the landing swift.  As we were disembarking, I took a good look around.  I still didn’t know whether to believe this was Arama or not.  As if he’d read my mind, Law touched my arm.

“Do you still think we’re hallucinating?”

I thought about it.  “I don’t know if I can say honestly,” I said after a few moments.  He sniffled.  I peered at him and asked, “Are you _crying?_ ”

He wiped his nose on his sleeve.  “ _No._ I think I’m getting sick.”  The look he gave me warned me not to bring it up again.  And his nose did sound stuffy.  I had several medicines at home that would have eased the symptoms, and I knew of a few herbal remedies.  I didn’t know if I’d be able to reach them here, and that brought me back to his question.

 _Did_ I think we were in Arama?  “Freya used to tell me stories about this place,” I said finally.  “They were so detailed, so realistic that I used to go to bed thinking that I’d wake up here one morning.  And I don’t know you well enough to hallucinate you like this.  If this is really the way you are,” I added, and his dirty look intensified.  I took some small amusement from needling him.  “So the only explanation I can come up for it is… Yes.  We’re really here.  We’re not dreaming or comatose.”

He sniffled again, and the look in his eyes dared me to say something about it. 

I didn’t.

He said, “Okay.”


	7. Interlude: Freya

INTERLUDE: FREYA

She’d been crying for hours.  The Grassfathom family had taken her in without a second look when she explained her circumstances.  They immediately wanted to take her back to her family, but Freya insisted she needed to find her friends first.  Otherwise things could rapidly get out of control. 

Wait.  They were already out of control.  She’d meant to sit down with Merry, gently explain to her that the stories she told were real, that they had a chance to visit Arama and at _least_ meet Freya’s family, and maybe pick up the parts she needed for her latest breakthrough in time travel.  The cops showing up looking for Law Zero – kinda cute, but not the sort of guy Merry should be hanging out with on a regular basis, especially given the whole ‘in trouble with the cops’ thing – and dropping the portalsphere were _not_ on the list of things Freya had planned on when she’d gotten up that morning.  And it was just an indicator of Meridian’s almost supernatural bad luck that she’d somehow managed to activate it by calling their names when she touched it. 

Although chronologically a year younger than her roommate, Freya suddenly felt old.  She’d almost had Merry in the transition – _almost_ had her, until Zero collided with them, knocking Freya away and tumbling out of the transition.  Freya couldn’t make a Door; she wasn’t that powerful yet.  But when she got back, it was going to be her next project.  They were never using a portalsphere again. 

 _Never._   There was just too much room for mistakes, and if not for those mistakes, she wouldn’t be facing a manhunt for her best friend across the whole of the land of Arama. 

Well.  They were total strangers.  Not even they would go totally unremarked, even if they didn’t hang around in one place much. 

If only she’d had time to explain to Merry that she _needed_ to stay in one place if they got separated; Freya would be able to contract someone to place a locator spell on them, and she could go directly to wherever they were.  Unfortunately, _sit still_ were two words that Meridian Lariat had never learned. 

And people said _Freya_ was the hyper one. 

Those people had never lived with Merry and her constant brewing-tea-dusting-rearranging-clothes-furniture-Freya-anything-she-could-get-her-hands-on _motion._

So she cried, releasing the frustrations of _finally_ bringing Merry home, only to lose her somewhere in the landscapes.

 _Just five more minutes,_ she promised herself.  Just a few more minutes of emotional outbursts, and she’d pull herself together and start the search.  Just a few more minutes…


	8. Chapter 8

CHAPTER SIX –

We ran into trouble almost immediately.  The air-sailors had given me some money to help us out – when they said Freya was a sacred name, they really hadn’t been kidding; the lengths they went to see to our comfort on the ground just because we were her friends was absolutely astonishing.  They explained it to me, but it was Law who’d retained most of the information, and one of the first and most important pieces of advice they’d given us was to buy some new clothes.  We stuck out as obvious outsiders dressed like this, especially this far from the Golden City.  Law and I ended up in a small town at the base of a mountain range.  The City was to the west of us, and Law and I had both agreed that we needed to go back to the city.  It was the place Freya had mentioned most often when she talked about Arama, and so we’d have the best luck picking up her trail there.  Exactly how we were going to _get_ there – well, that was up for debate now.

“We’re not walking,” Law said.  In the hour or so we’d been on the ground, his cold seemed to have progressed.  He was audibly congested, his breath rattling in his chest.  It was worrisome, especially because I had no idea what passed for a hospital here, and had no immediate access to antibiotics if it turned serious.  He insisted he just needed to rest for a little while, but we didn’t have enough to cover meals _and_ transport _and_ clothes. I took care of the clothes in a small couturiere near the center of the town.  It rankled that they didn’t offer long skirts or sandals – Freya teased me by calling me a hippie sometimes, because of the way I dressed, but I preferred the freedom of a skirt and loose shirt to the confines of jeans.  The clothing options appeared to be fantastic, wide-skirted dresses or tunics with trousers here, and if we didn’t have enough for transportation, we certainly didn’t have enough for a dress of that quality.  I sucked it up and bought the tunic for both of us. The proprietress of the clothes-shop clucked over our clothes, fussing and bussing around until she produced a green tunic for me and a black one for Law.  I wondered if Law was accustomed to wearing black, or if he’d asked for it specifically; it seemed to suit him. 

And an extremely peculiar thing happened when we stepped out into the sunlight:

His clothes shimmered from black to purple to dark green/blue and back.  Or maybe not a changing of colours, but more like the reflection, the way a purple car might look silver from one angle or blue from another.  The way red velvet turned black in the right sort of shadow.  It rippled as he moved, creating a mesmerizing effect.  I didn’t realise my own clothing did it too until I found him staring at me strangely.

“What’s wrong?”

“Your clothes change colour.”  

“So do yours.” 

We each took a moment to examine this particular effect, and that was the end of the discussion.  I didn’t think much of it aside from that, except when I happened to fall behind him while we walked the length of the town.  Then I couldn’t help noticing how the fabric draped over his butt, accentuating the curves and the sway of his hips. 

Talk about mesmerizing effects.

 

We still hadn’t come to an agreement about how to get to the City.  The sun was setting, and two moons were rising over the horizon; Law wondered briefly what sort of effects something like that would have on the local tides, and I was annoyed by the lack of more productive conversation going on and didn’t answer. 

It annoyed me as well that I had been wondering the same thing.

*

“Let me rephrase this,” Law said as sternly as his cold would allow.  “I’m not walking anywhere _tonight_ because I’m exhausted and feeling sick.”

We’d been arguing for three hours.  “So tomorrow, when you’re not exhausted?”

“Maybe.”

He was _snarly_ when he was tired.  “Fine.”

“Fine.”

“What, are we three now?”

“No, we’re tired.”

“Lawly needs a nap?”  I couldn’t help it; he was plucking my nerves like harp strings. 

“Augh!  Of all the people I could have ended up here with, why did it have to be you?”

I pulled my keys out of my purse.  I had a little magic eight ball on a keychain, and I shook it and read him the answer.  “Outlook good,” I said.

“ _What?_ ”

“Do you need some Midol?”  I asked, and shook the ball again.  “It is decidedly so.” I tried so very hard to keep the grin off my face, and the grumpy scowl on his just made me twitchier. 

“I do _not._ ”

“Do too.”

“Do not”

“Do too.”

“Now who’s being a kid?”

He had me there.  I didn’t really have a reply handy for that one, so I turned the conversation back to the previous topic.  “So tomorrow, maybe after you’ve had some sleep, you’ll feel a little better.  If you’re feeling a little better, maybe you’ll feel like actually going to the City, where we can most easily search for Freya who will have the way to get home.”

He flung himself up out of the seat and moved to the window.  It was such a violent reaction that for a moment, I didn’t know what to do.

“Law?”

“I don’t want to go back.”

I think I heard my jaw hit the floor.

“What?”

“I’ll walk with you to the City, and I’ll help you find Freya.  But I don’t want to go back.  My parents are dead.  I’m – I’m an accused criminal, even if I don’t remember what I did.  I’ll never have a normal life there again.”  He turned to me.  The moonlight streaming in through the window lit one side of his face up, shadowing the other half.  I half-noticed that even in the moonlight, his clothes rippled and shimmered.  It was like being in the room with a prince for a moment. “But you, you and Freya have your shop, your school, and your lives there.  I can’t interfere with that.  So I’ll help you get back.  But I’m not going with you.”

I didn’t know what to think.  My first reaction was _you’re leaving me?_ But then I realised there was nothing to leave.  There was nothing between us.  He’d come to us for help in fixing his problems, and in a roundabout way, we’d fixed it.  In doing so we’d created a hell of a lot of problems for ourselves, but at least Law would be able to start over and have a new life.  The same way I did.  The same way Freya did.

“Okay.”

He choked.  “I thought that’d be a lot harder to say,” he muttered.

I stood up and straightened my tunic, adjusting the belt.  “Why?  It’s perfect.  You came to Fix-its and Tarot for help solving your problems.  Well, we solved them.  You can start over here with no ties to your former life and never have to worry about the police again.”

He blinked his eyes twice, firmly.  “I never thought of that.”

“You mean you never thought of it _in that way,_ ” I corrected.  He gave a tremulous smile, and ruined it a moment later by coughing.  I winced; we’d started the shop to help people, and it was in my nature.  No matter how immediately frustrating he was, I hated seeing him suffering like this.  

“It’s just a cold,” he said.  “It happens, especially when I’ve been walking at night in the rain.  My immune system has never been the greatest.”

“Okay.”

“You really don’t have to worry,” he added.

“Okay.”

“If I die, I’ll come back and haunt you.”

“What?”

He grinned at me.  “I just wanted to make sure you were paying attention.”

I flicked my fingers at him, and turned to look out the window.  _Freya’s out there somewhere.  When we find her, we’ll be able to go home._

_I’ll be able to go home._

*

Somehow the rising sun came straight through the window and stabbed me straight in the eyes.  Even closed, the sunlight hurt and I flinched away from it instinctively.  Despite occasional appearances – and a great deal of teasing on Freya’s part – I was not in fact a vampire, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t as susceptible to bright lights as everyone else.  When my withdrawal from the over bright sun brought me into contact with someone else, my first thought was that Freya had come in to sleep with me at some point during the night. 

When a sleep-husky voice murmured low in my ear, my second thought was that I’d somehow been drugged and had done something unspeakably horrible.

“Good morning to you too,” Law said indignantly after I shrieked and threw myself away, propping himself up on his elbows in the bed.  Seeing him there, and the oddness of our surroundings, memory returned to me and I sat down at the foot of the bed, more relieved than anything.

“Sorry,” I said, and yawned.  Tea.  I had to have some tea.  “I thought you were Freya at first.”

He stared at me, wide-eyed for a moment, and then threw his head back and roared with full-throated laughter.  There were tears in his eyes by the time he straightened up.  “I can see how that would be a bit of a surprise.  There’s not many other ways to mix the two of us up.  Although I have to admit, I’ve had more flattering reactions from women in the morning.”

I hadn’t had any caffeine in nearly two full days.  Hearing him talk about his conquests at seven in the morning with no caffeine, after having woken up so abruptly, I suddenly found myself in a bad mood.

Worse than bad. 

“And I’m sure you tell all of them about the girl who came before her, right?”

“ _Bit-chy,”_ Law said.  His eyes were narrowed sleepily, his lips pouty and his hair was a tangled mess.  He looked devastatingly handsome, and it was more than I could take.

“Just shut up!  Go fix your hair!  Get out, leave me alone! I’ll find my own way back to the City!”

Law rolled languidly out of bed and stretched.  He’d taken his shirt off at some point, and he obviously took very good care of his body.  What had looked like slenderness underneath the baggy sweatshirt was revealed as a tightly toned and tanned body.  He shot me a bedroom-eyed glance over his shoulder, clearly aware I was staring at him.  I _couldn’t_ help it, though.  He smirked, and I threw the nearest thing to hand at him.  It was just a pillow, but his mocking laughter echoed into the room as the door closed behind him.  I shrieked in frustration, and straightened my clothes.  Let him do whatever he wanted.  Law Zero was clearly a morning person – something else he and Freya had in common, as well as crawling into bed with me – and I most certainly was not. 

“I’m leaving!” I shouted at him, hoping desperately that he’d take it the wrong way – though I only meant it exactly the way I’d said it.  I was going to find something hot, strong, and caffeinated, and see about food and a map.  _West_ from here was a fairly general direction, and the last thing I wanted was to be lost in the wilderness with him.

I was still pulling on my shoes when the bathroom door burst open and Law flung himself out into the main room, wild eyed. 

“You can’t leave,” he said.  I considered throwing my shoe at him.  Freya had joked and teased and mocked me about my so-called poker-face, but there was something about Law that simply brought out the worst in me.  I couldn’t hold onto my composure.

“I can and I am!  I’ve got to find some tea, and a map.”

He fell bonelessly to the floor and coughed.  For a moment, I thought they were related, and I was at his side before I had time to rethink it.  “Are you okay?”

The coughing was covering up a laughing fit.  “That’s all you’re doing?”

“You _jerk._ ”

“Bitch,” he shot back.

I was speechless.  Mostly because he _actually_ thought of me that way.

“Your mouth is hanging open,” he said slyly, and pushed my chin up with one finger. 

“I bite,” I warned him.  He laughed again, and then coughed.  Belatedly, I realised that most of the huskiness in his voice was because of his cold.  Cursing myself for an idiot, I didn’t bother to tie my shoes and fled through the door into the hallway.  With two layers of solid wood between us, I finally felt free enough to relax, and I leaned against the door to catch my breath.

It was really for the best that once we reached the City and found Freya we’d be going our separate ways.  I really didn’t think I could handle much more of Law Zero.


	9. Interlude: Law Zero

INTERLUDE: LAW ZERO

It took too long for him to figure out the shower apparatus, and starting the morning with a fight preceded by waking up wrapped around Meridian Lariat was not a good beginning to the day.  Luckily for one of them – himself or her, he wasn’t sure which just yet – she hadn’t realised just how close they’d gotten overnight.  He had to admit she was an attractive girl; if not for the whole arrested for murder thing he might have tried harder to get closer while they were awake.

But it was like a fifty foot wall right between them, and he couldn’t figure out how to scale it. 

He heard the front door open and close, and his first thought was that it was the police.  Then he realised what an idiot he was being, and called out cautiously.  “Hello?”

“It’s just me, Law.”

Meridian’s voice.  All the air rushed out of his lungs in one giant _whoosh_. 

“Did you get the map?”  There was a disconcerting silence, and then:

“Map?  Oh yeah, that too.”

 _Too?_   Law wrapped the provided robe around his shoulders and tied it before stepping out into the room.  He hadn’t done anything with his hair – and after catching a glimpse of himself in the mirror, he realised why one of the things she’d said to him was to fix his hair – and it was still plastered to his face by water.  Meridian, by contrast, looked stunning.  He felt frumpy beside her elegance. 

She had two cups of something steaming in her hands.  Over her shoulder was her purse, which he assumed held the map she’d mentioned.  _Oh yeah, tea._

“Do you drink coffee?”

She was holding one of the cups out to him.  He blinked; she’d put on that damn passive mask again, and he couldn’t tell what she was thinking beneath it.  Reluctantly, he accepted the coffee.

It felt remarkably homelike.  Then he remembered that he’d be making this place his home without her, and suddenly he felt a bit like throwing things, himself.

*

They’d gotten themselves together and set out shortly after Meridian returned with the drinks and the map.  She’d also brought him something wrapped in a pastry bun that he couldn’t identify, but it tasted wonderful.  The village was nestled into a large clearing – it had been there for so long that Law, no woodsman in the first place, couldn’t tell whether or not it had originally been cleared from the woods around it or if it had started life in a natural glade – surrounded by some of the tallest trees he’d ever seen in his life. 

They hadn’t been walking more than an hour, and Law felt like he was walking through a fairy forest.  The sunlight sparkled through the leaves, leaving dappled shadows on the moss and brush they walked through.  He kept expecting to turn his head and see unicorns nuzzling beside a lake, or faeries flitting between the trunks.  It was peaceful, and quiet – Meridian hadn’t said more than five words to him the whole time they’d been walking. 

It came as a huge surprise when she paused and half turned to him.  “…Law?”

Then she vanished, leaving no trace aside from an echoing scream.

“ _Meridian_ _!”_


	10. Chapter 10

CHAPTER SEVEN –

The ground slid right out from underneath me.  I went down several yards, half-freefalling and half-sliding before I came to rest on a small path winding down the side of the hill to a river.  The scream was embarrassing, especially the way it echoed off the trees, but I’d been startled.  Falling was one of my biggest fears.  Shaken up but unharmed, I was gathering my wits to call for Law when I heard a heart-wrenching shout.

_“Meridian!”_

It sounded like it had been torn from the depths of his soul.  For a moment I was so overwhelmed with the voice that I couldn’t react.  From my vantage point, I could see Law throw himself at the edge I had slipped over, his eyes frantically searching the ravine below us. 

He looked ready to cry. 

“Law,” I said softly, nervous.  “What are you doing?”

His gaze snapped over to me, and the relief lasted for about two seconds before something else I couldn’t identify filled his eyes.  “God- _fucking_ -dammit, girl, what the fuck are you trying to do to me?”

That explained it.  Anger.  Still half afraid he’d do something crazy, I kept my voice calm.  “I’m not trying to do anything to you.  I didn’t realise the road went down, and then it collapsed out from under me.”

He exhaled sharply, but some of the tension left him with it.  “Are you okay?”

 _Thanks for asking,_ I thought, but by now my pulse was returning to normal after the fright the fall and Law’s reaction had given me, and I didn’t have it in me just yet to snark at him.  “I’m fine.  Shaken up.  You scared the hell out of me.”

“ _I_ scared _y-_ ”

He cut it off, blowing a lock of hair out of his face.  He drove me kind of crazy, but the craziest part was, I was kinda getting used to him.  I tried to put myself in his place – if he’d suddenly disappeared in front of me the way I must have seemed to, I’d have freaked out too.  “Do you think you can get back up here?”

I remembered the map, and looked down at my hands.  I was still holding it, a little wrinkled and dusty but otherwise still there.  Looking at it, I shook my head.  “According to the map, the way we’re going is across that river.  There should be a bridge upriver somewhere that’ll make crossing easier.  So the question is, do you think you can get down here?”

“I – what?”

“Get down here.”

He gingerly began to step down, following my lead.  I picked my way across the rubble-strewn path, stopping every so often to make sure he was behind me.  Slowly, the trail made its way down the steep hill.  We walked in silence, and for me, at least, it was filled with thoughts of Law’s reaction.  It was totally out of proportion, I thought at first, and then I remembered my comparison.  If it’d been Law who’d fallen, possibly to his death, I might not have moved again.  The fact that he’d thought I’d fallen so far, and he still had the presence of mind to leap forward and look for me…

It was almost heartening.  He was a confusing, tangled mess, and he annoyed me more than I believed it was possible to be annoyed and not scream at someone, and there was something hanging over his head, and –

I couldn’t believe I’d forgotten about his parents.  Of course that was hanging over his head.  And we’d be parting ways as soon as I found Freya.  For some reason, that thought was disheartening.  I wondered if maybe I was developing deeper feelings for him, and examined the feelings I did have. 

Fondness.  Exasperation.  Puzzlement.  Not the greatest foundations for a relationship.  I felt better.

*

Law was grumpy.  There was no other way to describe it, but grumpy and sulking.  I didn’t really know him all that well, and I couldn’t say exactly why I knew it or what had tipped me off, or anything really.  But the pissy vibes rolling off him like waves on the shore were clear as day.  

His cold also wasn’t getting any better, and I’d been treated to a full symphony of sighs, sniffles, coughs, sneezes, and moans for the last several hours of walking.  My feet were beginning to hurt, and the nearest town wasn’t near enough for comfort.  It looked like we were roughing it tonight, and I wondered if Law could handle it.

“We should stop soon,” I said, breaking the day-long verbal silence.  He glanced back at me through his hair, and sighed.  Again.

“…Okay.”

“What’s wrong now?”

“You – never mind.”

I gave him a dark look, but refrained from commenting.  Instead, I sat down right where I was and pulled my shoes off.  The bottoms of my feet were sore and the muscles from my calves all the way up to my thighs were screaming out their displeasure with the day’s activity.  Out of habit, I pulled my deck of tarot cards from the silk bag that usually lived in my purse and shuffled them.

“You never apologised,” Law said, watching me.  “It’s silly, and I know it, but it’s still bothering me.”

I ignored him for a few minutes, focusing on the cards.  Once they were all laid out, I looked back up at him.  “Apologised for what?” 

“It’s silly.  But I still think you need to apologise.”

“ _Apologise. For. What?”_ The words were ground out from between clenched teeth.

He sighed heavily.  I twitched with the urge to throw something at him.  Literally, physically _flinched_ as I lunged forward and held myself back at the same time.  This was going to be unbearable.  “For scaring the hell out of me.”  The words sounded like they’d been dragged out kicking and screaming, almost sullen.  By this point, with such a big deal having been made of it, I just kept my opinion to myself.  We still had several days of travel ahead of us – the man who’d sold me the map had explained the easiest way to get there on foot, but it was still nearly a weeks travel time.  At the time, I’d thought walking for a week would be nothing, especially with a foreign country to explore and Law’s – well, _attractive_ company, at least, even if there was nothing going on inside his head. 

After one day, with five or six more stretching out ahead of me, I was longing for a bicycle.  Or a horse, even.  I wouldn’t even consider a car.  Couldn’t. 

Even as it formed, my mind shied away from the thought of cars, before the memory of rain took over.  Freya had learned to leave me alone whenever this came up, the hard way.  And Law didn’t deserve to learn.  He was leaving me soon, anyway, or I’d be leaving him behind.  That thought alone turned me away from the wet, smoking pavement that was trying to crowd into my thoughts, and I blissfully turned my mind onto all the reasons Law Zero was a Bad Idea. Number one – this ridiculous apology. 

This whole stream of thoughts had taken no longer than Law took to turn his head towards me, questioning, and I nodded.  Okay.  I could apologise for that.  It didn’t hurt me any, and it might make him a more pleasant travelling companion.

“I’m sorry for scaring you,” I said, trying to sound like I meant it, and not like I was  begrudging him the words.  His features softened, and he almost smiled.

“Thank you.”

The transformation was almost startling.  Then he sniffled again, rubbing at his nose with his sleeve, and reasons two and three popped up.

He was cute, but his personality left a lot to be desired.  And anyway, it was pointless to get involved with someone who would be living in an entirely different _world_ soon.  I’d go back to the shop with Freya, and Law Zero would disappear from the face of the earth.

Literally.

*

I didn’t remember falling asleep, only waking up in the middle of the night to a flickering fire, feeling cold. It wasn’t chilly out; this coldness came from inside.  From the dream.  Law was sitting not far from me, staring into the fire.  It reflected off his hair and face, turning his skin a golden red and his hair almost grayish in the gloom.  I watched him for a long moment, wondering what he was thinking about so seriously.  He blinked, returning to himself from whatever far off place his thoughts had taken him, and glanced in my direction.  I saw his lips curve into a smile when he saw me looking back.

“Bad dreams?”

His voice was husky and low, and I wondered how much of it was due to his cold, trying to ignore the shiver it sent up and down my spine. 

“Why do you ask?” Even to myself, my voice sounded prim and tight in the face of his warmth. 

“Just after you fell asleep, you started thrashing around and mumbling.  I couldn’t hear anything clearly,” he said quickly, defensive, “but it sounded like you were dreaming about rain?  And cars.”  His expression was puzzled, curious.  I knew exactly what I’d been dreaming about.  The details rushed back to me like they’d just been waiting for his words to turn the key and unlock the door.

“My parents died in a car accident.  It was raining heavily, and they lost control of the car.  It swerved into oncoming traffic and was torn apart.  I knew.  I could have stopped them from leaving, but I didn’t. Rainy days and cars remind me of them.”

“It was raining the night my parents died, too.” His voice was soft.  “I can understand how you feel.”

And he could, I realised.  I hated it when people said, “Oh, I’m so sorry.”  And the worst was “I understand.”

Because they couldn’t.  No one could understand what it was like to have your family ripped apart and your life destroyed – except the ones who’d gone through it too.

Except Law. 

 _We are not bonding,_ I told myself firmly.  “You should get some sleep,” I said out loud.  He gave me one of those crooked half-smiles again, melting some of the ice that had built up between us. 

“Yeah.”  He laid down, tucking his arms underneath his head.  I rolled over so that my back was to him, hiding my face away so he wouldn’t see the tears that spilled out of my eyes. 


	11. Interlude: Freya

INTERLUDE – FREYA

Settling everything she had into her center, she flung it outwards.  If it worked correctly, the magic would tell her which direction from the city Meridian had landed – and therefore which direction to travel to find her.

 _West,_ it told her.  _West west west west._

She saddled up a horse and pointed its nose west.  _I’m coming, Meridian._ _Hold on just a little longer.  I’ll find you._

 

The first village she came to was a ravaged mess.  Disease was rampant, and the body count was astronomical.  At a guess, Freya would have to say that half the village had been simply wiped out, and the disease showed no signs of stopping there.  Some were curiously immune, and they warned her away from the village.  As she routed around it, she wrote it into a journal she kept for her journeys.  She hadn’t heard anything about this in the city, and that probably meant they didn’t know.  She promised the immunes that she would bring word to the other villages and back to the city.

Glancing over her shoulder, she saw the immunes carrying carts of bodies into one large pyre – too many dead to burn them separately, she guessed, and sent a prayer to the gods for their souls.

She sent another prayer heavenward for Meridian and Law, that they wouldn’t come to a diseased village and succumb.


	12. Chapter 12

CHAPTER EIGHT –

I awoke next when the sun rose, strangely warm for the chill I could feel in the air.  I stretched, and the ground shifted underneath me.  I told myself I wouldn’t scream, but when I opened my eyes and saw Law’s dusky, half-lidded green staring up at me.

Then I screamed.

The next thing I was clearly aware of was Law sitting up and rubbing at his ears.  “That was loud.  Did you have to do that right in my face?”

I was about five feet away from him with no recollection as to how I got there.  “I – I – I… You… How in the hell does this keep happening?” I sounded hysterical.  I _felt_ hysterical.  When I’d fallen asleep last night – both times – there was a fire between us.

“You looked cold.  I _was_ cold.  I don’t know how you ended up on top of me.”  The slow smile was nothing like the quirky one he usually gave me.  I decided Law had split personalities.  There was the sex-god in the morning, and the spastic, quirky one later at night.  I didn’t consider who he might be during the day or while sleeping. 

“Maybe you grabbed me,” I accused, running my fingers through my hair to straighten it and try to comb out the tangles. 

“Maybe I remember it differently.”

He sounded so smug and sure.  I was ready to smack him, and said so.

“Maybe you’ll remember my palm across your face if you don’t knock it off soon.”

“Rawr.”  He curled his fingers into claws and waved them at me.  “You are catty in the morning.  Are you always this bitchy?”

“Yes!”  I threw myself to my feet and wandered away from our little camp, looking at the map.  Five more days of this, and I’d kill him.

*

The time passed quickly, much to my surprise.  Seeing the Golden City rising over the horizon was a definite celebration.  But when we got there, I was vastly surprised by what I saw.  Instead of the bustling, busy city of Freya’s stories, instead it seemed to be utterly deserted.  I almost wondered if we’d gotten off course after all, had found the wrong city.  But it was always referred to as ‘The City’ – there couldn’t be more than one, could there?  How would people know which city they were talking about, in that case? But no, I’d seen that tell-tale flash of gold in the sunlight, seeming to light the whole city on fire from the right angle.  There was no other city here like the Golden City; according to Freya, they’d lost the knack of building like that, the buildings seeming to have grown together instead of being placed stone by stone.  No one could do it any more.  I wondered how they’d done it in the first place, and then we were stopped by two official-looking people in the same not-black clothes that Law wore. 

“Please wait for a moment while we inspect you for THE DISEASE,” he said, politely but firm.  Law and I exchanged a puzzled look, neither of us sure what he was talking to. 

“I don’t object,” I said, and stepped forward.  He waved – and  I wish I was joking – what looked like a stick with a crystal lodged in the top.  It glowed white, and he waved me in.  I guess the process wasn’t so scary to Law now that he’d seen it, and he stepped forward.  The crystal lit up white for him, too. 

“Thank you.  You can pass into the City now.  Welcome to the Golden City of Arama.” They stepped back and let us pass in.  I guessed we were perhaps already a quarter of the way into the city proper already, and then remembered the word. 

 _Quarantine._  They’d quarantined the outer edges of the City and put up roadblocks to keep unwanted people out.  I wondered what the disease was.   The quarantine was working; here was the bustle I’d been expecting when we first entered the city.  People wearing the same style of clothes I’d seen in the village were strolling leisurely among the stalls and shops, shopkeepers stood in their doors and advertised their wares. 

“A peach!”

The voice came out of nowhere and startled me out of my reverie.  Law was gaping around at his surroundings, completely oblivious.  An attractive looking blond man in the same green tunic I was wearing swooped down on me and took my hand, kissing the back of my knuckles.  “You must tell me your name, lovely healer,” he said.  He practically oozed charm, but despite his abrupt interruption, I couldn’t really find fault with him.  I usually considered myself a good judge of character – my first and biggest failure had been with Law.  I hadn’t sensed anything about him that would put me off, until that newscast.

That was the past though.  I smiled at the blond man.  “My name is Meridian Lariat,” I said.  “And you are?”

“Karas Weer,” he said.  “Guildmaster of the Healers Circle, and I am totally at your service.  You look new here.  Is there anything in particular I could help you with?”

I wasn’t sure if the helpfulness of the people of Arama was natural or if they forced it.  I wasn’t displeased by the hospitality they’d shown me as a whole, however; it was a refreshing change from what I’d inspired in my own world.  Maybe Law’s idea to stick around wasn’t a bad one…

But no.  I had a shop to run – just as soon as I found my partner, and we got back to it.  I refused to allow myself to think about what was happening to the shop in our absence.  Especially with the way we vanished from in front of that cop. 

“Yes,” I said, wrenching myself away from those thoughts.  There was nothing I could do about it right now.  I’d fix it later if I had to.  “Yes, there is.  I’m looking for my best friend, Freya.  We came here altogether, but we got separated.”

“Oh,” he said.  “Oh!  What fantastic fortune.  You are the Meridian spoken of in the message. Your friend is looking for you, too, though for some reason she’s going away from the city.  I will at once go to the Guild and send a message to my guildies that you are here.  I need to go back at any rate, to find out the status of - well, a project we’re working on in hopes of defeating the plague.  Your help would be most welcome, should you choose to extend it to our guild while you’re visiting our fine country.  For the moment, do you have a place to stay while you’re here?  You or your…” he gave Law a puzzled look.  “Companion?”  When he returned his attention to me, his face lit up. 

It was flattering, especially after Law’s hot-and-cold behavior.  “No, we’ve only got a few marks left from Captain Carter.  I don’t think we have enough money left to find somewhere.  I was hoping finding Freya wouldn’t take this long.”  I knew myself well enough that if I kept talking I’d start whining, and then crying.  I was tired and frustrated, and despite the kindness of this guildsman, I was on my last straw.

“That won’t do at all.  Please, I extend the hospitality of my guild.  We are a healer’s guild, as I’ve mentioned, and it might be that time there will heal your wounds.”

I didn’t have the heart to refuse.  “Thank you for your kindness,” I said.  The only thought in my head was _a bed. A bed. A bed._

*

Walking into the guild headquarters was almost like coming home.  There were plants _everywhere_.  The air smelled of drying herbs permeated the halls, and tucked into the alcoves that lined the walls, I could see drying racks.  From the ceiling hung massive hanging plants and vines trailed up the walls.  Everything was green, and smelled alive. 

“It stinks in here,” Law said, wrinkling his nose.  I shot him a dirty look and inhaled deeply. 

“It smells of plants.  I think it’s wonderful.”

Karas, the guildmaster, looked gratified.  “I’m glad it was not a mistake to bring you here.  And for you, Companion, the smell isn’t so thick inside.  This hallway is just the entrance run, and is the best place to do the drying.” 

Law gave him a dark scowl.  “My name is Law Zero.”  I blinked at him.

Karas simply smiled widely.  “A fine name.  I imagine you come from the Zero family of Krusza in Arama?”

Law and I looked at one another directly for the first time since encountering Karas.  I felt startled, he just looked annoyed.  “No,” he said.  “I come from the Zero family in Norfolk, Virginia.”

Karas waved a hand dismissively.  “Emigrants,” he said, as if that explained everything.  I was beginning to wonder if he meant Law’s family had originated in Arama.  “But no matter.  Here you are again, returned to us at last.  And now, the formal dining room is this way, for some hot food and some chairs to rest in while I check up on my guild.”

“Do we owe you anything for the hospitality?”

To my surprise, it was Law who asked.  Karas paused in his flitting to consider it.

“You really don’t know?  This is the healers guild.  You are here to become well again, as guests.  You owe us nothing.  It is our calling, and we are very well funded by Arama itself.  I will say that if you ever find yourself with a nagging need to send us a large gift or donation – heed it.  That is all the payments we require.  Now please, make yourself comfortable.”  He opened a door and showed us in, and flitted away, reminding me of a butterfly.

 


End file.
